A survey by the General Comptroller of the Union on the effectiveness of agrarian reform policies showed that a significant part of settled families are unable to make a living from agricultural production, even after years of settlement.
The survey heard perceptions from 507 families from 57 settlements spread across the country. In total, 73% said that the income from the lot’s production is insufficient for subsistence. They depend on other sources, such as pensions and social programs.
Even though the report’s numbers are not statistically accurate, they shed light on bottlenecks in the .
“We can question the methodology, selection, randomness, but the fact is [que o relatório] is based on numbers that tell us some things, which are directly linked to the absence of policies to implement agrarian reform”, says Ceres Hadich, from the national directorate of .
Incra employee and author of the study “Agrarian reform establishments in the 2017 Agricultural Census”, Vicente Marques identified that agricultural production represented, on average, 69% of the income of settled families, which was R$19,600 per year — the value does not include what is produced for consumption.
“The study showed a great inequality in settlements between the federation units, within the same unit and between the 22 existing types of settlement”, he explains. In Piauí, for example, only 33% of a family’s income, on average, came from production.
This was also pointed out by the CGU as a warning. Of all 84 families interviewed by the agency in Bahia and the Federal District, only one said that the income from production was sufficient for subsistence.
“If there is no implementation of policies for agrarian reform, the result is in fact this. Only land, regularization or distribution are not enough for us to achieve an effective result of agrarian reform”, says Ceres, from the MST.
Incra data points to just over 9,500 settlements in the country, with around 1 million settled families. But only 6% of them are “consolidated”, which occurs through various actions, such as infrastructure, productive credits, rural education, environmental regularization and titling.
This year’s federal budget reserves R$335.3 million for final consolidation actions.
“The challenges are many, especially due to a small budget inherited from the previous government,” Incra stated in a statement. “The objective is, if not to put an end, to alleviate distortions, caused, in particular, in the period from 2018 to 2022, when the PNRA [Programa Nacional de Reforma Agrária] went through countless setbacks, being practically stagnant.”
The CGU survey, carried out between 2018 and 2023, identified a high rate of lots with demarcation in eight of the nine federative entities surveyed, but cited in the report that “a large part of the interviewees indicated as their main desire the definitive title and/or notary registration, with the objective of increasing the legal and legal security of ownership of the property.”
Title is usually seen as a condition for greater access to rural credit. Agrarian reform researcher Mauro del Grossi, professor at UnB (University of Brasília), says that another step needs to be taken first.
“We need continued technical assistance for settlers. Credit without technical guidance considerably increases the chances of failure and debt, especially with the increasing frequency of extreme weather events”, he says.
The expert points out that the period analyzed by the CGU, which mainly comprises the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, was marked by the dismantling of programs that give priority to settled families for government purchases, such as the PAA (Food Acquisition) and the PNAE ( School Meals). The guarantee of commercialization at rewarding prices minimizes the risk of default and debt.
From 2019 to 2023, an average of 38 thousand credit operations were contracted through Pronaf (National Program for Strengthening Family Agriculture) by settled families. The 2017 Agricultural Census showed that the country had around 557 agrarian reform establishments — this was the last edition of the survey.
Most of these settlements originated in processes organized by the MST over four decades.
“Land is not enough”, reaffirms Ceres Hadich, from the MST. “It is necessary to think about policies for the individual development of families, but also policies that impact the community. Access to equipment, culture, education, health, cooperatives, everything is connected in this interpretation that it is not just the land.”
The CGU research prioritized settlements created after the year 2000, with more than 50 resident families, in municipalities with high representation in the scope of agrarian reform and classified in a more advanced stage of consolidation. The study noted that poor infrastructure surrounds settlements in general, even though access to electricity is widespread.
Of those interviewed, 48% reported difficulty accessing health equipment.
Del Grossi mentions that the majority of settlements (87%) are located in cities with low or very low human development, or with high and very high social vulnerability (53%).
“This aspect is important because the context in which they are located matters: these are not unproductive settlements next to prosperous properties, but relatively poor settlements similar to their neighbors, and with the same needs as the region in which they are located.”
